


Cat <3 Mac

by rollercoastermoon



Series: Love So Sterng [3]
Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-20
Updated: 2019-09-20
Packaged: 2020-10-24 10:42:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20704640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rollercoastermoon/pseuds/rollercoastermoon
Summary: Mac and Charlie don’t tell the gang about them. Not right away.





	Cat <3 Mac

Mac and Charlie don’t tell the gang about them. Not right away. It’s too new and raw to add others into the mix, their whatever-they-are-to-each-other-ness is too ill defined. Even Betty agreed inviting the chaos of Dennis, Frank and Dee into the mix right then was just asking for trouble. This, at least, is all the ways Mac has convinced himself that this is why they haven’t told them. Not fear of rejection or ridicule, but fear of it getting fucked up.

So they don’t tell the gang. Not for weeks. A month, two passes. Charlie stays at Dennis and Mac’s. Says it’s ‘cause of Frank’s bad influence on Charlie when it comes to drugs (Frank takes this as a point of pride, rather than a disturbing truth about his and Charlie’s relationship) and the fact that they both genuinely do sleep better next to the other one, knowing where the other is. That’s almost too easily written off given Mac’s previous behaviors about hourly check-ins and such. They get a bit of a snide ‘shouldn’t this shrink be fixing the codependence in you?’ from Dennis, but no real shit for it.

Two months in, this all changes. It’s such a stupid thing, a moment of drunken carelessness from a patron leaves a puddle spilt from a beer glass on the floor, right where Mac fell That Night. Mac is tipsy. It’s late. He’s not drunk, but he’s not sober either. So he doesn’t catch himself, when he slides on the puddle. He tries. He misses grabbing onto the table to save himself, and goes down.

He’s not hurt, but for a moment, he can’t figure out why he can’t breathe. His chest is tight, eyes wet and wide and freaking out and why is he freaked out, and then his brain processes what he's seeing, remembers seeing the same thing on a hot night in August when he was so sure he was murdered, dying there on the floor with the taste of blood in his mouth and Charlie scream-crying at him to stay awake. He sees it and his brain goes haywire for a moment, feeling like he’s in two places, or rather, two times but the same place, and his brain fizzes and then there’s Charlie, leaning over him, kneeling next to him like That Night, not crying, but looking down at him with concern all over his face.

Mac looks past him. Reaches up and touches a finger to the underside of the table. Sees a slash of blood, probably, he's remembering now, from when he did that the last time he was laying in this spot. Most of that night after getting shot, was vague memories, sensations and the vision of Charlie crying, kneeling over him. He’s always remembered, this feeling of being okay, calm in those last moments before he lost consciousness. He forgot about what made him feel that way. Until now.

"Mac, please, you're scaring me, man," Charlie says, and his voice is rough and low, scared but not hysterical yet. Threatening to be hysterical if Mac doesn't respond.

Mac sits up. Charlie's face is all question, eyebrows up and knitting together. Mac can't answer. Can't find the words. Instead, he captures Charlies face in his hands. His chest is threatening to explode from pure fucking feeling. Charlie stares back at him with wide eyes, green and gold and fucking gorgeous. He leans in, but stops that last inch, grins into it when Charlie meets him, presses their lips together, because even when his heart is threatening to explode out his chest from goddamn happiness and something else, Mac can't just fucking kiss Charlie without knowing Charlie wants to be kissed, and, goddamn, knowing that Charlie wants to be kissed makes something twist low in Mac's belly.

Love.

It's love that's coursing through him, he realizes, pressing his forehead to Charlie's and just breathing deeply for a moment, shaky with the realization, one hand fisted in the hair at the back of Charlie's head, the other gripping the back of the other man's green jacket just as tight. This, this... is real love, not even the imagined love from God himself has ever felt this good. Love. Love is what he felt in those last moments before he passed out That Night….No. That’s not quite right. Love_d_ is what he felt. _Loved_.

Charlie says "Oh, Mac," so softly that Mac's not even sure he's aware he's saying it, and raises his hands up to gently swipe his thumbs under Mac's eyes. It's only when he feels the wet slide of them does Mac understand he's crying.

Mac closes his eyes and takes a shaky breath. A second. Charlie mirrors him. CharlieloveshimandhelovesCharlie.

Mac gasps in another surprised breath.

"Mac...?" Mac turns his head, kisses Charlie's palm, the inside of his wrist. Inhales. Exhales. He has to speak, to explain something, or Charlie is going to lose his goddamned mind. "Cat heart Mac," he says.

Charlie blinks at him, not understanding. "Huh?" His hands drop down from Mac’s face, rest against his chest, not ready to stop touching yet.

Mac laughs. Only Charlie could write this, then not remember it. "Look," he tells him, putting his finger under the words carved into the underside of the table.

Charlie squints at the words and then he's blushing, ducking his head. "I did that...umm, the first week we were open," he says quietly.

Mac laughs. It is not a mean sound. It is a shocked bubble of emotion working its way out his throat. "That was, like, twenty years ago, Charlie!"

Charlie's still ducking his head. His ears are red now too, the back of his neck. "It was true then too," he mumbles.

"Goddamn we're idiots," Mac says, and Charlie looks up at him, hopeful and no longer looking embarrassed. "I didn't...I didn't _know_ Charlie."

"Uh, yeah dude. I know you didn’t. You thought I was straight for more than thirty years."

Mac shakes his head. Amazed and dizzy with the knowledge that he’s known Charlie since they were five and in kindergarten, since they were tiny. "No—Well, yes I did—But, no," Mac growls at his inability to say what he's feeling course through every inch of him. "I mean--I mean...I didn't know I was wrong about love, Charlie."

Charlie tilts his head to the side. Looks like the overgrown dirty puppy he can be, sometimes. Fiercely loyal and full of emotion. He bites his lip, then says a phrase Mac knows Charlie hates to say: "I don't understand." Because all his life, he's been told he's stupid. He hates to admit when he doesn't understand. But when it's them, _them_, Charlie will say it. Always has been willing to. _Fuck!_ CharlieloveshimandhelovesCharlie.

"I, uh, I'm talking about how being loved is supposed to feel, Charlie. I didn't know. It's not scary like Go-"

Mac's words get cut off by Charlie crashing into him, hands on his shoulders to push him down, but before Mac's head can hit the floor, his hand gets between it and the floor because it's Charlie and Charlie fucking loves him and he loves Charlie.

Charlie's super blurry above him, but Mac can see through the tears that Charlie is shaking his head and smiling at him.

"Mac. Goddamn it," Charlie says, and he sounds so choked that Mac thinks: '_Oh shit. Charlie's crying too_' and then Charlie's bending down from where he's straddling Mac's waist and kisses him stupid. The whole time, Mac thinks: CatheartsMacMacheartsCat over and over and over.

+++

"Well. That's happening," Dee says, rocking onto her toes to better look over the bar at where Mac and Charlie are currently making out like teenagers.

"Yes. Yes it is," Dennis agrees from his stool. He's been holding a beer up to his mouth since Mac hit the ground, falling from a tiny puddle like the graceless lout he is, unable to get himself to finish the act of drinking because of the events playing out in front of him.

"It's like we're not even in the room."

"I’m not sure we’re on the same planet as them right now, Dee.”

They watch them some more. Mac and Charlie really are unwary they’re on the floor of Paddy’s, aren’t they? “I can’t say it’s very shocking, though,” Dennis says, after almost a full minute.

Dee hums an agreement, then asks: "You know what _is_ shocking, though, Dennis?” Her tone of voice vering into the same harshly critical squawk that got her her nickname. “You didn’t notice any of _this_ going on in your own home." She waves her hands at them. At least they’ve stopped shoving tongues in each other’s mouths and are now just paused, foreheads pressed together, both of them grinning like fools. “This is not new. That wasn’t a first kiss.”

Dennis glares at her and drinks from his beer. Drains it and sets it on the counter. "Have _you_ noticed anything going on before now, Deandra?"

"Oh, fuck you, dickhole! I don't live with them!" Her voices is rising up, and Dennis knows his is going to raise up as well. Which neither man on the floor notices. It's kind of understandable, but Dennis is planning on voicing his displeasure at them later.

Much later.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the most tooth-rotting cotton candy fluff I’ve ever written.


End file.
